What journalists & bloggers think about being chased by PRs
So much of my media consumption these days is made up of podcasts that I’ve decided to keep a kind of a scrapbook here on Mediaczar. Obviously the problem is that you can’t deeplink into a video or a audio file, so I’m crudely chopping the bits out that I like, and using the Anarchy Media Player plugin to host them here.
This is probably contravening all sorts of copyright laws. Fingers crossed, eh? I’m hoping it counts as fair use.
Here’s a short extract from TWiT (The Week in Tech, a popular podcast that I follow) where Leo Laporte (TWiT), Jason Calacanis (Mahalo), Tom Merritt (C|Net), and Dwight Silverman (Houston Chronicle) discuss briefly how it feels to be chased by PRs.
This is so frustrating as the same complaints have been made about flacks for ever. I don’t think it is actually the clients that insist on automoton style “did you get my press release” calls. Rather it’s a culture that has permeated by account leads trying to justify fees by being able to fill in we called X hundred journalists on the monthly report.
Really it stems from clients not understandng the value of PR is not just coverage generation, coupled with PR firms not being brave enough to push back on clients who think they are paying for the number of phone calls made and emails sent.
I agree to a large extent – clearly the “volume” metric has been a response to the explosion of new channels. In an attempt to measure & generate “share of voice” ratios, PR companies may have forgotten that it’s not “how much”, but rather “who”.
But this looks like a vicious circle. Are publishers, journalists, & PRs are unwittingly conspiring to devalue this market?
This will become untenable as more and more journalists are able to break away into micropublishing (Leo Laporte, the host of the podcast above, once joked that if he could reach 100K viewers a day he’d be “as profitable as CBS”.)
Oh, new media journalists love to spout on like this. I love it when they all get together and recount this particular complaint like they’re sitting around a campfire or something. Yet the moment they need information on a company, who’s one of the resources they turn to? And do they, in kind, sit around and compliment good PR people who get them good and timely information when they ask?
I can understand the frustration when PR people are persistent to the point of annoying, but why not put this to good use and let them know the best practices? This whole thing should be give and take.